Rushkoff Proposes We Fork the Internet 487
Shareable writes "Douglas Rushkoff: 'The moment the "net neutrality" debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network — its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation — is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them — that network loses its power to effect change. The mere fact that lawmakers and lobbyists now control the future of the net should be enough to turn us elsewhere.' And he goes on to suggest citizens fork the Internet & makes a call for ideas how to do that."
Re:I have an idea... (Score:5, Informative)
If I want to purchase services from a provider available to me that prioritizes YouTube and Netflix over Torrent traffic, why the heck shouldn't I be able to?
90% or more of us live in areas where other providers are not an option.
Even if there were multiple providers, I doubt you could find one who wasn't forced to prioritize traffic.
Re:I have an idea... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh wait...
Newsflash: The Internet is a series of (mostly) privately-owned and privately-operated tubes. Keep your regulations off my tubes. If I want to purchase services from a provider available to me that prioritizes YouTube and Netflix over Torrent traffic, why the heck shouldn't I be able to?
The problem is when that's the ONLY Internet you can realistically get. And given the monopolistic nature of Internet access, that's the likely outcome here.
Re:How about NO (Score:5, Informative)
Forking would only empower the mega-corps to invest in the locked down interwebs, while letting the free internet rot away into nothingness.
That depends upon what one means by forking. Several projects (like theconnective.net) aim to replace the last mile of the internet with community and cooperatively owned networks and allow those networks to interoperate and bargain collectively with core network operators. That is to say, if instead of Comcast or AT&T as your choices for home high speed internet, you could go with the city or county or community run mesh network which, in turn, buys a big pipe or two from whoever offers them not only the best price but also the least limitation, then there is little ability to mess with net neutrality, especially if a large number of these start making demands as a group or boycotting your service. It would be like trying to dictate to Comcast now.
The hard part is threefold, getting enough momentum behind it, overcoming the halo effects of TV and wires phone service, and keeping it from being outlawed by crooked politicians. I'm already part of one of the largest community wireless mesh projects in the country, but it needs to go a lot further. It needs organizers and people to show communities how to do it, technologically and politically, and to help organize.
Let the umm surfer unite?
Re:I have an idea... (Score:5, Informative)
Newsflash:
1. not everyone has a choice between providers.
2. even with different providers, sometimes they themselves have to go through one of the big one, which filters even those connections.
The problem is the Monopolies that are forming. (Score:4, Informative)
Most of you don't know the history, and are therefor doomed to repeat it.
For much of my life I have spent fighting the Ma Bell / AT&T monopoly. From the monopolistic control over Unix to all long distance services, to hicap pipes.
It wasn't until there breakup in the 80's that direct physical connection of modems was even allowed on to the phone networks.
Well we are down to the last few companies controlling the last mile, and many of the backbones. Legislation will just further this till we are all locked down to a few Internet services and the rest will be squeezed out or severely hampered.
IP TV and Cable TV over IP will be the largest changes coming. And companies like Cox and AT&T find themselves in a conflict of Interest.
Providing last mile Internet while at the same time watching it eat away at their cash cow, cable TV.
I think we can provide a VPN like tunneling service across the public Internet over to a private network. Most corporations already do this for their employees.
Getting that last mile has always been the hard part.
We could then make this private network host content only available on that network, but would anyone want too?
I mean if you are going to invest in a web server you'd want it to be accessible to as many users as possible.
Still I have some ideas I may be willing to discuss with an NDA.
For an interesting read checkout my ecip.com
It's illegal (Score:5, Informative)
This sounds like a great idea! A couple years ago I tried to get some people interested in building a community network based on some of the concepts from the Wellington Internet eXchange [linuxjournal.com]. Nobody wanted to touch it.
As soon as the people try to flex their muscle, they are immediately shouted down by the corporations. The laws in the USA have become structured such that corporations have all the power and the people have none. Just ask the citizens of Philadelphia, PA [arstechnica.com] or Wilson, NC [itworld.com].
Both of these cities, acting as agents of their citizens, were attacked by the corporations. In the case of Philly, they got squashed. Wilson's system is still alive, but not for the lack of effort on Time Warner's part. At one point TW had someone answering the phone for one of the congressmen the night before a vote. It was only thanks to the dedication of a small group of citizens, many of whom had to take off work to attend the oddly scheduled committee meetings, that the system is still online. We know that at any point TW will try again to scuttle it.